


but the pieces still fit (after all these years and after everything's changed)

by WattStalf



Series: one and one makes two (but three and four can come along too) [1]
Category: Baccano!
Genre: AU- Leila Lives, F/F, F/M, Idk what the fuck else was going on here, M/M, Multi, Sedoretu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 13:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19021027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WattStalf/pseuds/WattStalf
Summary: Otherwise you’d have been reckless enough already and got yourself killed. It’s not like it’s hard, in this day and age.





	but the pieces still fit (after all these years and after everything's changed)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Learn to ask](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7993558) by [chancellorxofxtrash](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chancellorxofxtrash/pseuds/chancellorxofxtrash). 



> Based off a friend's fic, I wrote an AU of an AU, basically. I've wanted to write this for a couple years, though I'm sure the original concept was much softer. I'm still not sure I'm satisfied with what I ended up with here, since I wasn't able to properly gather my thoughts the entire time.

Ladd and Leila were the best of friends, back then. They’re still close now, but things are different, and everything has changed, so much so that she does not have the handle on him that she once did, and, not only does he not listen to her anymore, sometimes he can barely look her in the eye.

After what happened to her, he changed once and for all, and neither Who nor Leila nor anyone else will ever be able to bring him back to how he was before.

~X~

The pieces were always there, but his friends were around to make sure that they didn’t fit. Or, at least, Leila did, because she’s always been damn bossy, and Ladd liked that about her, so much so that he would listen. As for Who, even if he never had the balls to speak out about anything, even if he were always something of a spectator, he was a necessity, behind them until he was between them, because he was an Evening and they were Mornings, and anyone could see how  _ those _ pieces fit together.

But as for Ladd, the pieces that lead him down this path were always there in his mind, from his earliest memory onward, and it was only Leila’s scolding that kept him from going all the way with his impulses. Now, however, he doesn’t and cannot listen to her, and he has other friends that he likes to spend his time with.

Leila doesn’t like them very much, but even she latches onto the nickname they have for Who, until that becomes more like his real name than anything else. She doesn’t come around Ladd’s group of friends, but Who does, always tagging along because he’s probably still head over heels for Ladd, just like nothing’s changed. Leila only hears about this nickname through Who himself, and rather than consoling him, she just joins right in.

Ladd likes her, she was his best friend once, and the three of them are still  _ something _ , but they aren’t what they were before, and Ladd doesn’t ever want to address what could have been.

~X~

Does he care about Who? Of course he does, it’s stupid to assume that he doesn’t, just because he’s different now, just because all the pieces fell into the right place to turn him into the monster he is now. Leila was his best friend, but anyone could tell that Who was going to end up his husband one day.

Sometimes, when the three of them were together, it looked almost as if Ladd and Leila were in love, before you found out they were both Mornings. Sometimes, it looked as if Who were left out and on the sidelines, but if he ever minded, he didn’t say anything about it, and it was never their intention, they just often got carried away. They were two of a kind, in a lot of ways, and there were things the two of them wanted to do that Who was simply not bold enough to tag along for.

At the end of the day, however, Who was their voice of reason, just as much as Leila’s bossy attitude curbed Ladd’s more reckless impulses. He was necessary to keep them out of too much trouble, so no matter how much he may have looked like an outsider at times, he was essential. They made a good team; he and Leila still make a great match, wtih or without Ladd, and in the aftermath, Ladd knows that it’d be better for them to be without.

~X~

They’re reckless and bored and stifled, and they get a stupid idea one night, to run away for a little while. Not permanently, not to stay; they know that Who- though they weren’t calling him that back then- would never be brave enough to come with them, and they would have to come back to him eventually. The two of them think of it as more like a vacation, and are planning what sort of souvenir they might bring back for him.

“And we should find a girl,” Leila finishes, and Ladd is surprised. The three of them have never actually addressed anything, still living as mere friends even though they all know what’s going to happen. He thinks, maybe, that he and Leila are waiting for Who to do something about it, and since he’s a coward, it’s taking too long. It’s kind of like a running joke, in that regard.

“A girl? What for?”

“For you, and for me. Gotta find one good for both of us, and then, I bet he would ego along with it either way,” she says. “I mean, if you and me both like her, how could he not be friends with her?”

Ladd doesn’t question the way she talks about everything like it’s already a done deal. He just smirks and asks her, “What kinda girl are you looking for? Some dainty thing, or a loudmouth like me, or what?”

“Someone prettier than me.”

“Huh? But you’re plenty pretty,” he says, mistaking it, briefly, for self-deprecation. And she is beautiful, incredibly so. Morning or not, he has eyes, and Leila only gets more beautiful by the day.

“So, what, I can’t want a pretty wife?” she retorts, and he laughs.

“I want…” He trails off, because he finds that he cannot picture what he wants in a woman. It isn’t as if he ever considered his type in a  _ man _ ; Who simply happened, but that doesn’t say anything about his type, if he even has one. What Ladd wants has nothing to do with the subject, and for a moment, his hands itch like they always do when he lets his mind wander into violent fantasies, but he knows if he even dares to speak about it out loud, Leila will yell at him, and hit him over the back of the head.

“I dunno,” he finally says, and lets it rest there. The two of them continue on their impromptu vacation, and they don’t discuss girls again, nor does Ladd think about them, but, from time to time, he does allow himself to think about killing.

Their trip comes to a quick end when Leila is the one who nearly ends up killed, and Ladd is powerless to help her until it is nearly too late, and from that point on, he never listens to her again.

~X~

They all thought they were untouchable, and that was their problem. He and Leila and Who- they were all guilty of this, but especially he and Leila. Running off into the night without a plan, like they thought they were guaranteed protection just because they were young and she was beautiful and he was strong, and she was strong, and Who was waiting for them, and they had things left to figure out.

She is lucky that she survives, luckier still that she’s able to eventually resume her life as usual. They all lived like they were going to live forever and they all took everything for granted, so in a way, Ladd thinks they deserved what was coming to them. He thinks that anyone who lives like that deserves what’s coming to them, and now that he has lost any desire to hold back on his impulses, now that Leila does not have the power to boss him around anymore, he channels all of those violent fantasies, and decides that  _ he _ will be what’s coming to them.

And no on-not Who, not Leila, and least of himself- can stop him.

~X~

Their friendship changes and Ladd makes his new friends, and he never considers being a part of what they never established. Leila and Who still make a good couple, and he hopes that she can find the pretty girl she’s been looking for, and that he can find a man that can actually take care of them, and that that man and Leila can be the best of friends, so Ladd can just cut away entirely.

He isn’t considering his own romantic possibilities, and it would probably be a waste to start from scratch when he had once almost been there, but then, he doesn’t think that anyone is going to be the right fit for him now anyway. There are a lot of men in his life now, with his new friends, and there are plenty of Evenings, and he never even thinks about it, because none of the pieces are ever there.

And then he sees a woman so beautiful that he has to stop in his tracks, someone more beautiful than he thinks he’s ever seen before, and he isn’t blind. He’s seen a lot of beautiful women, and none of them have been enough to garner more than a passing interest, but this stranger is different, with a quality that makes him start to wonder if his love life isn’t a lost cause after all, if he might not be able to find the perfect piece out there, if it isn’t right in front of him.

The feature that causes him to notice her and fall head over heels at first sight, that makes him approach her while not knowing if she’s an Evening while praying that she is, that makes him think they might fit together after all, is the look in her eyes. Her eyes are cold and disinterested and dead, as if  _ she’s _ alright dead, the opposite of the way he and Leila were just before everything changed. She doesn’t look like she thinks she’ll live forever; she looks like she’s on the verge of giving up any moment, like she doesn’t  _ want _ to live forever.

Before Ladd even learns her name, he falls in love with the look in her eye that makes him think this is someone that he would be able to keep safe.

~X~

Wooing Lua turns out to be a difficult task, and he surprises himself with how enthusiastically he gets to it. He is not deterred by the lulls in conversation or her disinterest in the small talk that he thinks he should be using to get to know her better. She isn’t anything like anyone he’s ever met before, and that’s just what he wants, and every time she rejects another textbook advance, the more smitten he is as he tries to learn how to fit these pieces into place.

It’s funny, cos he finds out she likes jigsaw puzzles, and he thinks she should be the one figuring out their pieces, and in the end, he supposes that she does. In the end, she’s the one to pinpoint their connection, when she learns more of his profession and his family and his hobby, and she asks, point blank, “Would you kill someone like me?”

“Not my usual type,” he replies, smiling wide. “You want it, don’t you?”

“I do,” she says, “but I don’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If I just wanted to die, there are lots of ways to do it. At least, I’ve learned a lot of ways, but I don’t want to do them,” she says. “I want to die, but only if-”

It’s the most he’s been able to get her to say in one go, and he doesn’t want to interrupt her, but he’s too excited to stop himself. “Only if someone else does it!” he finishes.

“I guess so,” says Lua, and she smiles for the first time,and it’s so small it’s barely visible, and Ladd’s chest is tight, and he loves her. “If someone else killed me, I think that would be okay.”

“You’d have to be pretty careful, to not die some other way while you’re waitin’ for that ideal death,” he says, his heart pounding so hard he wonders if she can hear it.

“I don’t know that I care that much.”

“Sure ya do. Otherwise you’d have been reckless enough already and got yourself killed. It’s not like it’s hard, in this day and age.”

For the first time in his many attempts to win over the beautiful woman, he has her talking, and they talk about common interests, and her desire for death and her reluctance to die, and before he knows it, he finds himself explaining it all to her, starting with the early days with Who and Leila, and bringing her up to the present.

At the end of it all, he and Lua end up engaged, without any idea about the other two their marriage needs to be official, without any clue what kind of oddball pieces could ever fit with them.

~X~

Ladd is reluctant to introduce Lua to the others. He’s so proud of her that he wants to show her off to everyone, but then he always remembers, he and Leila, with Who in the middle, his best friend and the man who was supposed to be their husband, and how he and Leila wanted to find a girl together.

Really, it makes no sense to him that the three of them are still friends after all this time, that Who is still tagging along where he doesn’t belong, that Leila is still voicing her disapproval and trying to boss Ladd around, even knowing now that he’s too far gone for her to reach. They should hate him, and he shouldn’t be able to face them, and he can barely look Leila in the eye as it is, so why?

If they had just left him to go off the deep end on his own, then he wouldn’t have to feel guilty now, and what does he have to feel guilty about anyway? They were never official, but he and Lua are, and Lua has those beautiful dead eyes and that reverence for death that gives her caution like no other, even when she longs for it all the same. Such a perfect and precarious balance, and he wants to be the one that can protect her, and they seal it with a vow more powerful than their engagement.

_ I’m the only one who gets to kill you. _

She is not the type that he likes to kill, she is not the one who has it coming, but if she wants it, then it’s going to be from him, when he’s ready for it, and until then, he’s not letting anyone or anything have that honor. This is the sort of connection he could never hope to have with anyone else, so why does he feel guilty for that?

He feels so terrible about his reluctance that he tells Lua outright, and she says, “You never stopped caring about them.”

Does he care about Who? Of course he does, he never had to think about it before, because it was always so obvious to him. The man was always so pathetically weak when they were children that it was laughable, and he never really grew out of that, and he and Leila were always looking after him, but to Ladd, that was the most obvious display of affection. Weak or not, it never made sense  _ not _ to love Who, and Leila must have felt the same way.

Does he care about Leila?

Why else would he still be beating himself up after all this time? Why else would he be too damn afraid of her to look her in the eye? She’s his best friend and she isn’t fragile, but he’s seen firsthand how fragile she is, and everything was his fault, and he doesn’t want it to be his fault again. Leila was so strong that he thought she could take care of herself, he was never supposed to take care of her, not like he took care of Who, or how he now wants to take care of Lua.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Lua tells him, when he finds the words to express all of that to her.

“How the hell is it  _ not _ ?!”

“You just said you weren’t taking care of her.”

It’s simple. It’s too simple to really make sense, but it makes perfect sense to him, and he understands then why they’re still tagging along behind him. Leila doesn’t blame him, because she never wanted him to look after her, she never expected anything more from him, and Who has always realized her strength, and never thought of anyone looking after her.

The pieces never fit together the way Ladd thought they did after that day, and if they all still fit together, and Lua fits perfectly into his life as it is now, then maybe he doesn’t have anything to worry about after all. He and Leila were supposed to find a girl together, but they were also supposed to stay home and stay out of trouble, and she was supposed to be able to handle herself no matter what, so he thinks that it’s okay for him to deviate a little bit too.

There’s a definite possibility that the pieces won’t fit together after all, that Leila will reject a girl like Lua, who fits too much into a part of Ladd that she always tried to keep suppressed, or that Who will be incapable of speaking with her and understanding her, that their quiet natures will put them at odds. There’s a possibility that Lua will be unable to show so much of herself to the strangers, and a possibility that his friends won’t welcome any change after all these years.

Moreso than that, there is a possibility that he’s wrong, and they’re not hanging around out of any sort of love, but just obligation, because they’ve always been such good friends. Who and Leila might still love each other, but they might have already written Ladd out of the equation, and not give him or Lua a second glance.

He isn’t afraid of any of these possibilities, at least not enough to hold back. Whatever happens, he will move forward from there; if all the pieces fit together, or if he finds out that they can’t fit together after all, he will figure out where to go from there. He and Lua will always fit together, he’s certain of that, so if the others don’t fit with them, regardless of the hurt that will come with that, he will move on, with Lua at his side.

And whether there are ever two others or whether only the two of them can ever hope to fit, he will be happy with that.

~X~

When he asks Leila what her first impression of Lua is, she tells him, “She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

Somehow, he knew she would be able to see that too.

**Author's Note:**

> If I'm ever able to, I'd like to write about Lua's relationships with Leila and Who, but I didn't have enough time to get into all of that, nor did I want to change POVs that far into the fic.
> 
> If you're interested in my writing updates, please follow my fanfiction twitter @WattStalf  
> I'll follow back so long as you don't post anything hateful!


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